Strings as particles. Basic question.

[Mean-Hippy]

How small are those strings anyway ? Brian Green says in his book that they are a lot smaller than the particules we are used to deal with so, I mean, Is a quark the expression of one string or many, how many "actual" strings in a electron, a gluons etc ? Or is my conception ( yet again ! ) flawed ?

 

[Tsu]

It's been my understanding that quarks (and all other particles) are made up of strings. But then again, I'm NOT a physics nerd so an answer from one of them might be more meaningful! I don't think we know how many there are in each of them because we cannot see them! We can't count what we can't see. We can only theorize that they are there (mathmatically). (Right guys?? Good grief! Am I finally getting the hang of this? :)

 

[Mean-Hippy]

Yeah, I ve fidured the basic of the facts that the elementary particle are strings but I am trying to understand if 1 particule = 1 string ?



To toss my brain around, String physics over vodka anyday !

 

[selfAdjoint]

The particles of the standard model would not be "made of strings", rather their wave functions (they all have 'em) are made of vibrations of strings. All the constant talk about particles obscures the fact that particles are a derivative concept. There's a reason the standard model is called a quantum FIELD theory, not a quantum particle theory.

In some of the proposed models for getting known particles out of string physics you have vibrating strings with their ends stuck to branes. In order to get the interlocking properties of the particles that the standard model specifies, they have to have intersecting branes, one set of branes generates the SU(3) properties and another the SU(2) properties, and the strings begin on one set and end on another. The branes themselves carry charges that generate the properties. So then the strings vibrate and some of the vibrations wind up as the wave functions of some of the particles. I believe each particle comes from only one string, but one string can generate more than one particle.